It's the spring of 1938 and no longer safe to be a Jew in Vienna. Nineteen-year-old Elise Landau is forced to leave her glittering life of parties and champagne to become a parlour maid in England. But war is coming. When the Mr. Rivers son, Kit, returns home, he and Elise strike up an unlikely u...
4.75*. I deduct .25 only because I'm not 100% sure how I feel about the ending. No spoilers in review below. Fantastic book, one of my favorite of the year so far. I'm looking forward to checking out other books by this author to see the others are nearly as good.The story is so good - some histo...
I came across this book while at the library and saw that it was a Reader's Choice Nominee. It looked like an interesting book, so I rented it and read through the 300+ pages. And here is what I thought:My first impression of the book was that I moved pretty fast. Within the first 16 pages, Jack ...
Clara and Ralph no longer had to tear around, taking Katy and Annabel to and from school while shuttling Robin up to London for his piano lessons. The only one who was not thrilled at the respite was Robin. His lessons were reduced to once a fortnight during August, an outrage he could barely end...
I dusted in my sleep and my clothes smelled of spilled vinegar. The only respite from loneliness was stolen minutes in the yard, feeding apple cores or lettuce scraps to Mr. Bobbin. The yard was situated at the side of the house away from the sea, but I could hear the crash of the surf, while coa...